Apple Brown Betty is a thoroughly American dessert that belongs to a group of cobbler-style preparations that include grunts, crisps, crumbles, pandowdies, buckles, slumps, flummeries and the sonker, a dessert found in North Carolina cookery.
In many ways the Betty most resembles a kind of bread pudding or crisp. But instead of using bread cubes, crumbs are the preferred topping and thickener for the filling.